What the Sphinx Knows

The fedora **hat** hung on the door knob like a question mark—a gesture, maybe, of his suddenly reclaimed bachelorhood. Elena stepped around it, the empty hallway swallowing the sound of her heels. She was here for the rest of her things. The apartment still smelled like him: cedar and that expensive cologne she'd bought him three birthdays ago.

In the living room, the **goldfish** bowl glowed with that sickly aquarium light. Jerry floated near the surface, mouth opening and closing in soundless petition. Five years together, and somehow the fish had survived every fight, every move, every night she'd slept on the couch. She dropped a pinch of flakes into the water—force of habit—and watched him surface to gulp them down.

"He's yours, you know," Julian said from the doorway. He'd cut his hair. That was new.

"I don't want a pet that remembers us."

"She's not dead yet, Elena."

She turned to face him, really face him, for the first time since she'd walked out two weeks ago. Above his desk hung that print of the **Sphinx** at Giza they'd bought in Cairo, during that week when they'd still believed in landmarks and future plans. The Sphinx's broken nose mocked her. Riddle me this: when does love curdle into resentment? When does shared history become shared damage?

Outside, **lightning** fractured the sky, illuminating the dust motes dancing between them. Storm coming. Always a storm.

"The **cable** company called," he said. "They want to know whose name is on the account now."

She laughed—a short, ugly sound. "We're really doing this. We're really splitting up the cable bill while everything else is still burning."

"What else is there?" His voice cracked. "You left. You made the choice."

"I made the only choice I could. You were already gone—physically there, emotionally somewhere I couldn't reach. I spent six months talking to a man who looked at me like he was solving a puzzle he'd already solved."

The lightning flashed again, closer this time. Thunder followed, rattling the windows.

"Take the fish," he said. "Take the sphinx print. Take whatever you want. Just stop looking at me like I'm the villain."

She looked around the apartment they'd built together, the life they'd dismantled piece by piece without ever meaning to. The goldfish swam in endless circles. The Sphinx guarded its ancient silence. The fedora waited on the door knob like a punctuation mark.

"I don't want anything," she said, and meant it. "I just wanted to see you one more time before I really let go."

The first drops of rain began to fall against the glass. She turned toward the door, toward the hat that wasn't hers, toward a future that was suddenly and terrifyingly unknown.